There are growing questions about the mysterious crash of a UPS cargo jet in Dubai on September 3, in which both pilots died after a fire broke out on board, in the light of the recent discovery of parcel bombs hidden in freight sent from Yemen. The United Arab Emirates aviation authority announced on Sunday that it had found no evidence of explosives having been on board the plane that crashed shortly after take-off on September 3. It said the most likely cause of the explosion was that a quantity of lithium batteries included in the cargo exploded when fire spread to them. It had no answer to the question of how the fire might have started in the first place. Some observers are now urging security experts to look again at the September 3 incident (pictured above) - if they are not already. One man who is convinced there must be a link is the terrorism expert Max Abrahms, who teaches at Dartmouth College and Princeton. Abrahms believes the authorities should be working on the assumption that the September 3 crash was caused by a bomb similar to the devices found on October 29 on a UPS cargo plane at East Midlands Airport in Britain and at a FedEx facility in Dubai. "I think it would be very prudent to connect the dots," Abrahams told the Gulf News. "It seems like commonsense now and clearly there are similarities between the crash and this latest incident." The plane that crashed on September 3 was a Boeing 747-400 heading for Cologne. When the pilots failed to deal with the fire, it crashed into a military compound near Dubai's international airport. Awlaki 'charged': Prosecutors in Yemen have announced that the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, believed to be head of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has been charged in absentia with "promoting violence and the killing of foreigners". It is the first time the Yemenis have taken any legal action against Awlaki, who is in hiding from the CIA. Dry run: It has been disclosed that security authorities intercepted three parcels sent from Yemen, also addressed to synagogues in Chicago, in September. They contained literary material but no explosives. It is now assumed they were a 'dry run' for last week's plot. Lethal: The two ink cartridge bombs discovered on cargo flights on October 29 contained far more explosives - pentaerythritol tetranitrate or PETN - than the so-called 'underwear bomber' was carrying when he tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009. His bomb weighed 2.82 ounces. The bomb found at East Midlands Airport contained 15.11 ounces of PETN. The device found in Dubai, contained 10.58 ounces. Pro job: US officials have told reporters that the two ink cartridge bombs were so expertly constructed that the wiring was hard to detect even using X-ray equipment. Some wires were disguised to look just like printer cables. Tip-off questioned: It was reported yesterday that the Saudi Arabian authorities were told of the plot by Jabir al-Faifi, a former member of AQAP who had been detained at Guantanamo Bay. But the Washington Post reports that according to Gregory Johnsen, an expert on Yemen who teaches at Princeton, AQAP first announced Faifi's arrest on September 6. If Faifi has been in custody for nearly two months, how would he have such detailed knowledge of last week's parcel bombs? Filed under: cargo bombs, AQAP, Al Qaeda in the Arabian PeninsMystery of UPS cargo jet that crashed on Sept 3
Why is no one joining the dots between the earlier, mystery crash and last week’s plot? Or are they?
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Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/70954,news-comment,news-politics,mystery-of-ups-cargo-jet-that-crashed-on-september-3?DCMP=NLC-daily#ixzz14F9BVqVZ
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
LAST UPDATED 12:14 PM, NOVEMBER 2, 2010
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